As the BJP shifts gears in UP, the Opposition parties seek to portray it as opportunist
As the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election inches closer, the major players in the State — the BJP, the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress, to an extent — have amped up their electoral game as they seek to make last-ditch efforts to occupy voters’ mind space. The cacophony emerging from the Opposition camp that the BJP is focusing only on its Hindutva agenda and tom-tomming various projects with a definitive tilt towards Hindu votes, has forced the ruling party to sit back and take notice. Concerned that such statements, if made repeatedly in one voice and with conviction by the Opposition parties that are seemingly bitter rivals in this arena, could alienate voters from other castes, communities and religions, the BJP is consciously making a slight course correction and is now going fast and loose talking about “vikas” and underlining its vision for the development agenda for the State. All available signals in the party’s ongoing journey towards winning the battle for the ballot indicate that the launch of the Purvanchal Expressway would certainly not be the BJP’s last gift to Uttar Pradesh this election season.
There are already reports in the media that PM Modi could lay the foundation stone of two more infrastructure projects and inaugurate at least three projects next month. He is likely to be in Greater Noida on November 25 to lay the foundation stone of the Noida International Airport project and hold a public rally there. Chief Minister Yogi had said the work on the 594-km-long Ganga Expressway will “start in a few days” and the work on 296-km-long Bundelkhand Expressway was going on at a fast pace. Two other key projects, set to be unveiled in the Gorakhpur region by the PM, will be a fertiliser plant and an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Gorakhpur, which is scheduled tentatively for December 5. However, putting the proverbial cog in the wheels of the ruling party’s game plan are ever-growing shrill voices that the BJP is on this “development spree” involving only the projects that had been envisioned and planned by the erstwhile State Governments. “The BJP Governments are only inaugurating projects started by the Akhilesh Yadav Government,” an SP functionary was quoted as saying. Be that as it may, the only thing clear right now is that it would take a lot more than Hindu-wooing and credit-stealing for the BJP to emerge the favourites at the hustings.